A8 PEOPLE Thursday, April 8, 2010 •

If you have people news, contact Babette Stenuis Stolz, people editor, 439-9351 • bstenuis@petoskeynews.com

Literate Matters PETOSKEY

April
showers
us with
verse
April is my favorite month,
not only because of the spring
flowers and the regular sun-
shine, but because it is National
Poetry Month. Not a Hallmark
holiday, the commemoration is
a nod to the power and persis-
tence of verse.
A recent celebration of this
combination is Kay Ryan’s “The
Best of It.” Ryan, the current
U.S. Poet Laureate, has enjoyed
a long career in poetry, though
her work has long remained un-
der appreciated.
A native Californian, Ryan’s
new book is a collection of new
poems and old favorites. Start-
ing with selections from 1994’s
“Flamingo Watching,” there
are also offerings from previous
publications such as “Elephant
Rocks” and “Say Uncle.”
The first time publications
include the simple
but resonant “The
Edges of Time,”
where Ryan ex-
plains: “It is at
the edges/ that
time thins. / Time
which has been COURTESY PHOTO
Glen dense and viscous/ Glen Young, an English and advanced placement literature teacher of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State and Inter-
Young as amber suspend- at Petoskey High School, teaches students at Gymnasium 18, a school national Research and Exchanges Board to promote professional de-
ing/ suspending
intentions like bees/ unseizes in Lutsk, Ukraine, a poetry lesson in English. Young visited Lutsk from velopment in education. Young was one of 40 teachers from across the
them.” This suspension be- March 15-26 as part of an exchange program sponsored by the Bureau United States selected for this exchange.
comes a humming, “apparently
coming/ from stacks of/ put-off
things.”
Ryan regularly focuses on
these “put-off things,” intent
on exposing the
spaces revealed
when time is
peeled back.
Petoskey teacher humbled
This process is
seen anew in
“Virga.” Ryan
shows, “There
are bands/ in
the sky where/
by experience in Ukraine
what happens/ ■
matches prayers.” Glen Young 1 of 40 “I was amazed and
Ryan’s poetry often converses
with the natural world, won-
U.S. teachers chosen impressed with the
dering at the simple pleasures for exchange program level of English-
written in the unpretentious be-
havior of the animals. In “How
language skills the
Birds Sing,” she details how, Christina Rohn students (in Ukraine)
“One need not practice; / one 439-9398 - crohn@petoskeynews.com
simply tips/ the throat back/
had. I could take
over the spine axis/ and asserts one of their 10-form

the chest.” This posture doubly
asserts the simple mechanism
of song, alongside the marvel
of the notes.
Another recent volume of
note is Wendell Berry’s latest
collection, “Leavings.” Berry,
the farmer-writer from Ken-
tucky who has penned novels,
essays, and poetry over a nearly
50-year career, is, like Ryan,
closely connected to the land-
scape. His voice has long echoed
with a muscle strengthened by
a life lived in fields planted with
crops of alfalfa and expectation.
Though his poems tend more
toward the conversational,
and lean more regularly on the
collectively reverent, Berry is
Ryan’s contemporary in ways
large and small. From “Sab-
bath, 2005-2008” he softly pro-
claims, “I know that I have life/
only insofar as I have love./ I
have no love/ except it come
from Thee.”
Later he exclaims, “Those
who use the world assuming/
their knowledge is sufficient/
destroy the world.” Berry cel-
ebrates the power of the simple
without isolating his audience
or his argument. This constant
combining of purpose and wit-
ness, wedded by verse, demon-
strates Berry’s comfort at his
craft.
Berry also unabashedly tra-
verses the landscape of politics.
“Out of charity let us pray/ for
the great ones of politics/…that
they too…in their small-
ness…may know the greatness
of Earth.” Berry and Ryan both
trade in optimism and wonder
in their new collections.
April is a time to celebrate
collectively the power of poetry.
Kay Ryan and Wendell Berry
provide two powerful voices
worthy of this rejoicing.
Good Reading.
Glen Young teaches English at Petoskey High
School. His column, Literate Matters, appears
the second and fourth Thursday of each
month. Young can be reached at P.O. Box 174,
Petoskey, Mich. 49770. Follow his blog at
www.literatematters.blogspot.com.
H
e believes he
learned more from
the experience than
Ukrainian stu-
dents and teachers
learned from him.
Glen Young, an English and
advanced placement literature
teacher at Petoskey High School
recently traveled to Lutsk,
Ukraine from March 15-26, as
part of a teacher exchange pro-
gram.
Young, 48, was selected last
fall by the Bureau of Educa-
tional and Cultural Affairs,
U.S. Department of State and
International Research and Ex-
changes Board to be one of 40
teachers from across the United
States to participate in a two-
way exchange program to pro-
mote professional development
in education.
Those selected for the ex-
change were sent to 18 countries
throughout the world, including
the Caucasus, South and Cen-
tral Asia, Southeast Asia, South
and Central America, and Sub-
Saharan Africa.
Young was sent to Lutsk, a
city populated by more than
200,000 people in the northwest
part of Ukraine.
While there, Young spent
a majority of his time meet-
ing and conversing in English
with students in forms (grades)
second through 11th in Gymna-
sium 18 — one of 20 schools in
the city.
“Gymnasium 18 is a school
that emphasizes foreign lan-
guage; English and Russian
being their primary foreign lan-
guage,” he said. “Other schools
concentrate on math and sci-
ence.”
Young said he was surprised
to learn that students in Lutsk
had begun learning English in
first- or second-form (grade).
“Their students seemed more
motivated to learn foreign lan-
guage than our students — we
essentially expect to teach our
students foreign language, but
(Ukrainians) put a premium on
mastering it,” he said.
During his nine days at Gym-
nasium 18, Young said, rather
than have him teach lessons,
Ukrainian instructors had him
converse with students.
“(The Ukrainian teachers)
didn’t need me to help them
find ways to teach their stu-
dents English ... more than any-
thing, they wanted me to speak
English to their students,” he
said. “Most, if not all of those
students had never had the
chance to speak English with
a native, English-speaking per-
son.
“I was amazed and impressed
with the level of English-lan-
guage skills the students had.”
Young said, the same could
not be said about his students
if the situation had been re-
versed.
“I could take one of their 10-
form students and put them on
the street corner in Petoskey
and they could find a place to
stay, something to eat and call
for help if they needed to,” he
said. “If I took one of my stu-
dents to Lutsk, they’d be totally
lost.
“I think Americans tend to
think the rest of the world
should adapt to us, which I don’t
necessarily agree with.”
Young said, if it wasn’t for his
Ukraine
host teachers, he would have
been lost as well.
“I can’t recognize anything
in the Ukraine ... I’ve traveled
abroad before, but I’ve never felt
completely unable to commu-
nicate ... it made me feel totally
dissatisfied with my foreign lan-
guage skills,” he said. “My hosts
would have to follow me to my
hotel’s restaurant at night and
help me read my menu ... it was
quite humbling.”
In addition to his classroom
experiences, Young was also af-
forded the opportunity, during
his visit, to learn more about
the history of Ukraine.
“Every day I would spend a
few hours in the school, and
then I’d be escorted on some
cultural excursion,” he said.
“We went to the theater, some
museums and a 14th-century
castle — it was unlike anything
I’d ever seen before.”
On his last day in Ukraine,
Young was also able to tour Ki-
ev, the country’s capital, which
is home to around 4 million
people.
“Kiev was a marvel; I was
just knocked out by the history
and the architecture,” he said.
“Everywhere we turned was
a monument — I was awed by
their history.”
students and put
them on the street
corner in Petoskey
and they could
find a place to stay,
something to eat and
call for help if they
needed to. If I took
one of my students
to Lutsk, they’d be
totally lost.”
Glen Young
Petoskey High School teacher
Now that Young has returned
to Michigan, he says he has al-
ready begun planning ways to
incorporate what he learned in
Ukraine to his classroom.
“I would really like to link
some of my students to the
students at Gymnasium 18,” he
said. “I want to find a way to
break down stereotypes ... the
students in Lutsk tend to get
most of their information about
Americans from the movies,
television and Internet, and I
know my students tend to get
information about their foreign
counterparts the same way.”
Young said what this trip
made him realize, is that people
around the world are unique,
but for the most part, very simi-
lar.
“I think these opportunities
show us that we aren’t that dif-
ferent from people in other parts
of the world,” he said. “And, by
sharing our experiences, we can
all improve what we do.”
Young said he has already
begun looking for another op-
portunity to teach abroad.
“This was the greatest adven-
ture of my professional career,
and the measure of any such
adventure is your willingness to
go back — I’d go back at the first
opportunity,” he said.